Watch You Bleed Me Dry
by WaltzMatildah
Summary: Season three AU: Months of dead-end searching for Stefan eventually come to a terrifying crescendo just outside of Mystic Falls.  Warning: character death. D/E, S/E, D/K, S/K, cast. COMPLETE.
1. PART ONE

**.  
><strong>

**WATCH YOU BLEED ME DRY**

(PART ONE)

* * *

><p><strong>one<strong>**  
><strong>

Damon spends most of the night that should have been his last slip-sliding erratically between vague unconsciousness and raging, horrifying awareness. Wakes, trembling and disoriented and more than three quarters to convinced that Katherine's declaration of saving the day had been nothing more than the next dice roll in her never-ending game of betrayal. The bone numbing agony in his arm has him near tears and it's all he can do to stop himself from wrenching the ruined limb free.

Elena stays.

Katherine leaves.

It is becoming a most familiar routine.

She watches with breath held firmly in a chest she's sure is about to burst wide open as he writhes, tangled in bedsheets that will have to be destroyed come morning. Her knees tucked tight under her chin as she slowly goes numb from the waist down. A feeling to match the detached thud of her own heartbeat.

She itches between staying put and making off into the dead of the night at a flat run. No plan more intricately developed than i_find him/i_ looping through her misfiring synapses. Fists her fingers into her mouth to stop the screams instead, tight, white knuckles against her teeth, as she accepts the notion for what it is.

Nothing more than fanciful naiveté.

During rare moments of lucidity she forces more of the miracle blood between Damon's lips. Slicks spilled rivulets from his sweat-soaked throat like it's finger-paint. Resolutely shuts her eyes as he licks them clean once more.

Hears Katherine's words echo, mantra-like, through her own cavernous insides.

_"It's okay to love them both – I did."_

Spends countless, pointless minutes analysing the phrasing.

A futile exercise. Unable as she is to separate out the truth from the intricately woven web of lies.

.

.

.

She wakes with a start. Wrapped in a throw she doesn't recognise, but curled into the corner of a room that she most definitely does. The bed at its centre is empty. The suffocating air filled to thick and cloying with the acrid tang of sweat and other unspeakable fluids.

"Morning."

The voice comes from the doorway. Laced through with something she can't quite fathom. Tight and tense and heavy and a thousand other inflections she doesn't remember noticing in it previously.

"Damon." Her own is breathless and confused in comparison. Her default setting it seems.

He holds a glass of juice in her direction. She notes; freshly squeezed. Accepts the offering without commenting on the tremble of his extended arm. His fingers, ice-cold against her wrist as he steps back into the doorway. Gives her space she hasn't yet requested.

She flicks her tongue out, moistens sleep-dry lips. Tastes the ghost of him still coated there.

Downs half the contents of the glass in a bid to forget.

.

.

.

Her fingers fumble clumsily against the too flat buttons of her cell phone. Tap out unsteady replies, one after the other, to the frantic texts that have arrived over-night. The sun has barely limped to present over the horizon but she figures they all deserve more than to worry needlessly about her.

There are other more worthy subjects after all.

_Stefan..._

She chokes back a sob that stings of betrayal. It is the least she deserves.

.

.

.

Damon watches her stilted movements through lashes barely dragged to half-mast. Silently tracks her agitated progress round the grand room like a motion detector from his position on the sofa.

She's refusing to let him do anything. Stand. Speak. _Move_.

He grants her the cloudy illusion of control. Carefully calculates the moment of least resistance.

"I'm going after him."

She nods back a distracted "_Mmm hmmm..._" before catching herself.

"You're _what_?"

He shrugs because he knows she's heard him loud and clear. Drags his gaze to where his fingers sit loosely in his lap. Wonders if the fact that he can't quite feel them is at all problematic.

"No." She spits the word like it means something. Like it might just have the power she needs to make him take back his declaration. "No, you can't."

And he thinks the real truth might be about to arrive.

"You can't because I am." A pause before; "Besides, you have to stay here to keep them all safe while I'm gone."

And there it is.

He wonders at what point she came to think of him as someone she could trust to look after the people that mean the most to her.

And if she'll ever understand that it is not their safety he'd fight to the death to protect.

The fierce determination in her voice is nothing new to him. It is the vague threads of fear and apprehension that ring with somewhat less familiarity. He latches onto them, chooses to use her neon-bright shortcomings to his own desperate advantage.

"You do realise you're only human, right?"

She blinks back, lips pouted into a soundless o. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you'll die." He shrugs his shoulders carelessly, as though the notion doesn't terrify him to his hollowed out core, "You go after Klaus, you're dead."

"I have no intention of '_going after Klaus_'. I'm going _to get Stefan._"

He snorts harshly at the absurdity inherent in her statement. At the sobering notion that she may not understand those things are one and the same.

"I'm-" She stumbles over the words as she fights to continue, like she's making up her argument as she trips along. And perhaps she is, hands on her hips and dark eyes bright with tears she'll do her best to never shed in front of him. "This is not up for debate, _Damon_."

Spits his name like he's the five year old he can never remember being.

He pushes up from the couch, stalks toward her at a speed he knows she'll never track. Has her up against the wall with his numb fingers wrapped loosely around her throat, one stretched up to split her lips in half, _shhhhhh_. She blinks and fat tears coat the back of his hand, salt-water slick. He lets her go without word. Knows his point has been more than made as he turns; pretends he doesn't hear her sink to seated on her heels, soft sobs shattering the otherwise empty silence.

.

.

.

In the end they both go. And perhaps the most absurd thing about the hours that preceded the final compromise of sorts is that Elena's almost certain both of them knew this outcome was inevitable from the very start.

She sighs into her palm, watches as her hot breath momentarily fogs the passenger window of her car. Blanks out the world for a split second or several before slowly receding to reveal more of the same.

She lost the paper/scissors/rock that determined the driver for the first leg of their rescue mission. Has resigned herself instead to swimming amid the _what ifs_ and _maybes_ that have truncated her every thought since Katherine's announcement that Stefan was gone.

She watches the faded grey of the highway disappear under the hood of the car as the miles tick by soundlessly.

One by one by one by one towards a hazy horizon that doesn't seem to creep any closer.

* * *

><p><strong>three<strong>

Elena wakes to the dull green-grey glow of the laptop screen as it illuminates the crappy motel room they're calling home for the night. The bed at her back is cool. She knows without needing to roll over that it remains empty. She brings her hands up to her face instead. Scrubs shaking fingers against her eyes, sandpaper-rough behind her lids, and feels the never-ending exhaustion seep just that little bit deeper into her marrow.

The curtains, thin and pulled slightly askew, tell her that it's still the middle of the night. Heavy cloud cover, the last remnants of the rainstorm they'd encountered that afternoon, blanks out any moonlight that might otherwise have lit the night sky.

She sits then, pushes slowly to upright and gives her eyes a second or several to adjust to the muted light. Seeks out his silhouette where he appears uncomfortably hunched in a wooden chair. He's mumbling under his breath, erratic, panicked, and it takes her longer than it probably should to realise that he must be dreaming.

The revelation is a slap in the face.

She slings the covers back, weighs up her options for a beat before swinging her feet floor-ward and padding across the threadbare carpet towards him.

It's cold in the room. Chilly night air sneaking inside through the gap under the door, through the vent that threads the bare wall above it, through the badly cracked bathroom window. She shivers, longs to wrap the covers back around her shoulders and bury her head into the surprisingly fluffy pillow she's just abandoned.

Figures he must be freezing, asleep at the table. Vows to wake him gently and convince him to get into the bed. And it's a sound plan, she thinks.

Until it's not.

.

.

.

Her hands are headed in his direction even before her voice can catch up with a whispered version of his name.

Damon startles then, at the shift in air across his face, at the sharp sound of a car door slamming on the other side of the street, at whatever it was that had been happening deep inside his subconscious, he doesn't examine the content of his dreams too closely these days.

Does in fact learn from past mistakes, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

But he spins now, stumbles and has her pressed up against the creaking plasterboard wall before she can register that he's even awake. Before he, himself, can register that the dream has ended. This is real-life on repeat. A forearm across her throat and fangs, already descended.

"Damon."

The word barely rumbles its way to vocalised as her vision begins to blur out at the edges. She brings her hands up. Works her fingers into place on either side of his face. He hasn't made a move to do anything beyond restrain her so far, but she's practised enough in the nuances of 'vampire' to know that that could change in a split second.

"Damon, you're hurting me." She kicks out with feet that she's sure must be inches from the floor. Feels her bare toes connect with his shin bone. Doubts he even registers the contact even as she prays desperately for him to drop her.

Which he does.

"Elena." Whisper soft. Laced with a degree of mortification that she's yet to have encountered with him.

She manages to get her feet back beneath her before she hits the ground. Remains upright but only just, as he seems to stagger backwards. Trips over nothing, over everything that has come between them, falls. Doesn't even make a sound as the back of his head collides solidly with the worn metal base at the bottom of the double bed they've not yet managed to share. If he feels the impact then he certainly doesn't react to it as the sound of skull on rusty metal fills the room to full, to overflowing.

She crouches down, her suddenly sweat-slick back still against the wall she'd just slid the length of, one hand kneading at the tissue surrounding her throat while the other wraps protectively around her middle.

His hands are balled into white-knuckled fists by his sides. And he's breathing like he's just run a marathon despite the lack of any real need to do so.

"It's okay," she offers. Knows without needing to think that it is no such thing. Tries again nonetheless, "Damon, it's okay. It's my fault, I shouldn't have-"

"Did I hurt you?" Like the notion that he might have is more than he can ever hope to bear.

"No." She's on her knees then, crawling across the rough carpet towards him. "No, I'm fine. See?" Wraps her fingers around his ankles tightly, the only contact she can bring herself to initiate, "I'm just fine."

She swallows and the motion is more than uncomfortable. Makes a liar out of her almost immediately. There will be bruises. Of that she is certain. Figures she can deal with that revelation when the sun rises and brings with it a fresh perspective.

"Let's go to bed, yeah?" She nods at him, silent encouragement. "I'll be back in a second." Slips into the bathroom and leans back against the door as she closes it behind her. Takes a deep breath or several in a desperate attempt to get her heart rate under some kind of tentative control. Mentally berates herself for entertaining the dim-witted notion that sneaking up on a sleeping vampire in the throes of a nightmare and attempting to wake him up could ever end well.

She counts to seventy three. Intends to make it all the way to one hundred but her teeth are chattering so severely by the time she reaches fifty that even her revised target of seventy five proves too much. Forces herself to give him a minute or two to regain his composure, sort his head-space out and hopefully get into bed.

Passes the time by staring at her own ragged reflection in the water-marked mirror above the sink. Runs a finger down the centre of her face and splits the distorted image into before and after.

Before then, after now. Considers the intervening time period as some kind of alternate reality filled with far too much un-holy horror to really process as something true.

.

.

.

Elena's departure, abrupt as it is, serves to push him into motion. Paces several lengths of the cramped motel room before settling on two options. Booze or bed.

Bed or booze.

Resists the pull of chemical oblivion, but only just.

When she braves re-entering the room, the laptop screen has been pushed to closed and it takes her a moment to detect where he's moved to, curled into himself as he is on the side of the bed that she'd been sleeping in earlier. His back is to her, deliberately no doubt, and dimly lit by the faded streetlight that leeches through curtains still askew. A glint of red stains the nape of his neck, blood leaked, still leaking, from where his head had hit the base of the bed. She brings her fingers up tentatively, runs them loosely through the black curls knotted there and tries not to be too disappointed when he flinches violently under her touch.

The cut, now mostly healed, disappears up into his hairline, and she uses its presence as an excuse to burrow closer to him. To lose her fingers in the silky black that surrounds his left ear and bring her knees up so that they fit into the right-angled gap created by his own. Waits until she's sure he's not about to protest before dropping her hand and wrapping her arm solidly around his ribs.

Whispers a silent mantra into his shoulder-blades that she'll do whatever it takes to get him through this. To rescue Stefan. To put everything back to the way it had been.

Refuses in that moment to admit that things have already been irrevocably altered.

* * *

><p><strong>eight<strong>

They're thirty seven miles south of the Canadian border, following information provided by a vague one-sided cell phone conversation with Alaric back in Mystic Falls, when it happens for the first time. Elena is driving, having snatched the keys from the bench they'd stopped at an hour or so back and refused to hand them over again. Creeping the vehicle just a few extra clicks over the limit and refusing to look sideways at his exaggerated exclamations of disbelief.

"Elena Gilbert. I believe that last sign we passed said fifty five miles per hour. Not sixty..." he reaches across her to get a clearer view, "... three. Lead-foot."

He wraps his hands around the seat-belt that crosses his chest. Uses the angle to press his fingertips into the ribs just below his left arm. Barely manages to conceal a wince at the sudden pressure building up there.

It feels like someone is sitting on his chest. Or has wrapped some kind of vice around his ribcage and is methodically tightening the screws. He shifts in his seat, attempts to adjust his position in order to lessen the discomfort.

"Are you okay?"

She doesn't look up from the road as she asks. Keeps her eyes front and centre as soft snow begins to blanket the hood of the car, to pepper the black stretch of road ahead. Dares him to give her a straight answer.

Dares him to tell her the truth.

He thinks this might just be the forty seven thousandth time she's muttered those words since they set off eight days ago. They're beginning to lose all sense of meaning as he nods his head mechanically, mutters back his standard, "I'm fine." Contemplates adding a quick _never better_, but decides against the possibility of raising any red flags. Figures there's no point freaking her out over a little indigestion.

Right?

By the time they reach the customs check point he's almost beyond the point of hiding anything from her. The three minutes that it takes to compel the border guard into letting them past is almost more than he can stand.

"Damon?" She can see the obvious discomfort. That he still thinks he's capable of hiding it from her stirs something deep and primal. She shoves her foot against the accelerator with more disjointed force than is strictly necessary.

He can feel the forward momentum of the car start to pick up again as they head deeper into Canadian territory. Tilts his head back against the seat, does his level best not to scream.

"Damon? What's going on?"

He hears her jam the signal to on, swerve the car a little further to the right and up onto the gravel shoulder. Skid the heavy vehicle to a sliding stop before fisting her hands into the front of his shirt, dragging the sleeves up to his elbows in an effort to no doubt double check the location of the now healed wolf bite.

"Damon? Wake up. Are you okay? What's going on?" Doesn't give him a chance to answer one question before spilling the next one out onto his lap.

"Shhhh..."

"Damo-"

"Elena, I'm fine." A lie, that much is more than obvious, even to him.

Especially to her.

He tugs his sleeves back into place by his wrists defiantly nonetheless, "Just drive the car."

"No, Damon, what the hell?" Incredulous. She can see her eyes, saucer wide, reflected in the rear-view mirror as she checks the flow of traffic that passes them, oblivious. "You almost passed out."

"I'm a vampire, Elena, I don't _pass out_." He brings his hands up, eyes still closed, curls his fingers into air quotes to sling around his mimicry. "I just... I guess it's gonna take a little longer than I'd hoped to get back to normal. Compelling that guard was..." He shrugs, unsure how to finish the lie of omission. Settles on avoiding it altogether. "Just, keep heading north. Ric said something about a lake near Saint Gabriel so, that's where we're going."

"I think- " She thinks a lot of things these days. Mostly, _Stefan_ and _Oh, God_ and _Jenna_ and _I can't_... "I think we should turn-"

"Elena, seriously. If we turn around I'll just have to compel _another_ guard. Are you _trying_ to kill me?"

She huffs, he can imagine the indignation painted across her face and manages to prise his eyelids open just enough to see the evidence for himself.

"I'm fine," he reiterates, wills it to be true with everything that he has, "I'm just gonna sleep for a while, okay?"

She nods enthusiastically, her hair spilling more completely from the messy pony tail she'd dragged it into that morning. She tucks a stray tendril behind her left ear, keeps nodding. Wonders if maybe she's forgotten how to stop.

"Okay, yes good. Sleep is good. You need to sleep more. Oh-" Stops again, remembers something vital. "Oh, no. We ran out of blood. What if-"

He reaches his hands up, captures her flailing limbs in his. "I'm fine, Elena. I'll get some later. Just drive, okay? Highway forty, straight up until we need to turn left on thirty one into Joliette. Can you do that?'

She's back to nodding again. Isn't entirely sure the last disjointed head bob she started has yet to slow to still, one mute agreement melting into the next.

And sometimes it's just easier that way. So she's beginning to realise.

"Good. Wake me up when we get there."

.

.

.

Damon is convinced he doesn't sleep. At least, not really, not at first. Keeps his eyes resolutely closed in order to carry out the facade for Elena's benefit, but uses the endless hours that tick by to develop and subsequently discard theory after theory for what the _fuck_ is going on.

Notes with some degree of relief that the agony subsides steadily from the crescendo it had managed to reach at the border.

He must have succumbed to exhaustion at some point, lulled into unconsciousness by the steady rhythm of the car beneath him and the muted echo of Elena butchering song lyrics but at least managing to do so with some degree of melody.

She startles him to awake with the slam of her car door in the parking lot of a road-side motel. He tries not to think too hard about the motivation behind the duck and run tactics she's taken to using when waking him up. Tries not to re-live the time she went for a gentler option and it almost got her killed.

Tries valiantly.

Fails in the end anyway.

.

.

.

The air temperature outside the car is shocking as Elena navigates a gauntlet of puddles and packed snow that separates the parking lot from the reception. Can't help the sudden sadness that descends when she laments that this is not how she'd planned to spend her first night in Canada. Naïve fantasies of _Cirque du Soleil_ and impossibly enchanting locals serving her the finest coffee she's ever tasted. Red wine and ice skating under a thousand twinkling fairy lights.

Forces herself into a deep breath that almost freezes her lungs to frozen solid and pushes against the worn wooden door marked with a faded _Welcome_ that is inexplicably missing the _l._

_We come._

Yes, we do.

Damon uses the cover of her turned back to scrub his hands across his face and pretend he's not watching the swing of her ass as she crosses the half empty lot and pushes her way into the brightly lit entrance. He cracks the window an inch or several so he can hear her book the room. Keeps one ear on the casual conversation about free WIFI and continental breakfast even as he's retrieving her phone from the console in the centre of the dash and searching her contacts list for Bonnie's number.

Hastily transfers the information into his own phone for later and tosses hers back into the space he'd dragged it from. Replaces the candy wrappers that had been covering it and vows to make the call once she's sleeping. Figures it's the only sensible conclusion he's managed to come to along the journey so far.

He pushes his door open then. Stretches to standing and rubs the heel of his hand absently against the phantom ache in his chest. Frowns at how completely back to normal he now feels and can't help but wonder whether he maybe imagined the whole thing. Thinks back to the side-splitting agony that had engulfed him not hours earlier and concludes that it was very real.

.

.

.

The room they fall into is everything and nothing like all the other rooms they've lived in these past few nights. The names may alter somewhat. The décor may shift from orange, to brown, to a faded mint green.

Very little else changes.

And the haunted look in her eyes only deepens.

He calculates one hundred and ninety seven hours have elapsed.

Elena gave up the count days ago.

.

.

.

They settle on a make-shift dinner of surprisingly good burgers and fries at a cafe across the street from their accommodation. Damon slings his arm casually along the curve of her shoulders as they dodge the spray kicked up by a passing SUV.

Convinces himself it means nothing when she doesn't immediately shake herself free.

The waitress scrubs resolutely at the Formica counter tops that surround them in the otherwise empty cafe and Elena even manages a stilted giggle when the radio is turned off pointedly the moment their last fry is devoured.

"You think she's trying to tell us something?"

He answers her with a deliberate slurp of his empty soda glass and vows to make her laugh at least once every night from now on.

When she grins and lifts her gaze to meet his, at once bright and unguarded, he thinks the degree to which she must hate him for securing Stefan's fate has faded an inch or several.

Feels his own ramp up a notch at the notion.

.

.

.

He waits until her breathing evens into a rhythm that threatens to drown him. An hypnotic pulse that works its way under his fingernails.

He slips soundlessly out into the frigid night air then, scrolls the length of his contacts list for Bonnie's number.

Paces out laps of the parking lot at human speed for something to do while he gathers together the patience that a conversation with the witch is going to require. Reminds himself, more than once, to tone down the jerk that she never fails to drag out of him.

He gets her voicemail after eight rings. Disconnects the call impatiently before hitting re-dial.

"Hello?" Sleep muffled. He'd feel guilty if it were anyone else.

Smirks wryly.

Concedes. _No he wouldn't._

"It's Damon," he explains, figures they're well and truly past the need for fake pleasantries. "I have a question."

"Who?" Drags a pillow to her chest with the motion required to sit bolt up-right.

And frankly, he thinks her confusion is more than a little insulting.

"Damon Salvatore" he drawls with more than a trace of derision. "You know, the evil vampire lord currently trawling the countryside with your bff to find the perfect boyfriend vampire and the murderous original vampire that stole off into the night with him."

If he loses her mid-sentence it's fine. He loses himself too.

"Where's Elena?" She fails to hide the breathless panic that has worked its way into her bones. Split second fast.

"Um, well, it's like..." Guesses, "Four am. She's sleeping..."

"Damon." His name as a warning. She itches to hang up but has to admit to being suddenly, oddly, intrigued by the notion that he'd resort to contacting her. "What do you want?"

"Now, now. Who said I want any-" He trails off, remembers his opening line. "Oh, that's right. I did. Yes."

"Seriously?" He can almost hear the irritation build in every syllable she vocalises.

"Seriously." Can't seem to help himself nonetheless. "I need you to check into something for me."

She's silent on the other end. He can hear her muted exhalations echo across the network of fibre optic cells that separates them. Drags in a solidifying breath of his own before leaning his shoulder blades back against a damp power pole.

Bonnie drags her grandmother's grimoire from its hiding spot under a biology text book and a freshly washed sweater that hasn't quite made it to her closet as he speaks. Leafs idly through the faded pages as Damon's hollowed out voice filters down the line.

In the end she scratches out a paragraph and a little bit of notes and promises more than just half-heartedly that she'll look into it. See what she can find out.

That she'll get back to him without alerting Elena to the change in circumstances.

She baulks at that at first. Needs to physically stop and think and remember before she can nod her head once and agree. The less Elena knows about this the better.

For now at least.

* * *

><p><strong>ten - seventeen<strong>

They make it back across the border some days later. Waste gas on vast stretches of the Canadian country-side that yield little more than flat plains and the heady stench of losing ground fast, before turning the car south and limping over the line into North Dakota. Elena, exhausted to the point of delirium, finds herself oddly transfixed by the methodical up and down of the oil rigs that dot the horizon.

Giggles at the absurdity of the landscape until soda fizzes out her nostrils and Damon slams the car to a stop in order to more fully fix his incredulous gaze in her direction.

"Are you serious?"

"What?" She's still giggling, blinking back tears and wiping at her nose with the sleeve of her sweater.

They're long past the pretence of manners and dignity after all.

"I mean, _look at it!_" She gestures expansively out the window behind his canted head, "It's _ridiculous!_"

He doesn't bother with the view outside the car. Knows borderline hysteria when he sees it and vows to hole them both up in a motel for the night.

Another one.

.

.

.

They find a place to stay in Fargo and Damon makes sliding references to the Coen brothers while Elena squints her eyes at him blankly and reminds him with a self-satisfied grin that she was barely two years old in nineteen ninety six.

He huffs back that it doesn't matter. That anything produced by Joel and Ethan, _Joel and Ethan, _like he knows them both personally, and hell, she concedes silently, he probably does, is compulsory viewing. She shrugs loosely, bites heavily into an apple as she slides the curtains closed with her free hand. Watches his reflection in the glass as he rolls his eyes at her back with a shake of his head.

She can see he's got the heel of his hand pressed to the centre of his chest, and the echo of pain that ghosts his face matches macabre images she already has stored of him from weeks gone by.

He registers that she's caught him out in the same fraction of time that she opens her mouth to speak. But he's quicker than she is. He'll always be quicker. Has his back turned to her and is pretending to pull a toothbrush from his backpack by the time she's spun the required one eighty degrees to face him.

The dull throb had reignited in his ribcage about an hour ago. And while it wasn't getting any worse just yet, it was more than enough to be an uncomfortable warning.

.

.

.

"You'd tell me if something was wrong, wouldn't you?"

They've had the lights off for the best part of an hour. The rush of traffic swooping past on the rain wet street outside their window melting into the sound of her breath whistling in and out, out and in. He'd known she was still awake by the speed of the shallow inhalations. Tosses up pretending to be asleep with creating some kind of half-baked response.

Figures, either way, he's going to end up lying to her.

"Damon?"

Her bed creaks as her weight shifts and he can picture her sitting up, peering through the not-quite-dark in an attempt to make out his silhouette. He keeps his eyes resolutely pressed to closed. Wills her to lay back down and sleep. It's the only reason they've stopped after all.

"Damon?"

A little more insistent this time as her feet hit the expanse of carpet that separates their beds. She's no-where near convinced that he's sleeping but she thinks she might be just the right amount of willing to go along with his ruse. Can't quite bite back the feeling that for once, knowing might just out-weigh _not_ knowing.

Slips quickly between the sheets and into the space against his back. Presses her arm along the cold length of his spine, closes her eyes against the muted memory of her lips on his and sends a silent promise to Stefan that they're on their way.

_Hang on, we're coming..._

Almost manages to convince herself that she hasn't already betrayed him one hundred ways to Sunday.

.

.

TBC


	2. PART TWO

**.  
><strong>

**WATCH YOU BLEED ME DRY**

* * *

><p>(PART TWO)<p>

* * *

><p><strong>twenty four<strong>

They're back in Mystic Falls for almost two days before Damon resolutely gathers the energy required to come face to face with a Bennett witch.

Bonnie slides only somewhat reluctantly into the booth at The Grill. Dragging her soda along the table top, it leaves a trail of condensation behind as proof it had existed there first. She'd only been outside anyway and the fact that he's beaten her to the spot only proves her theory that he'd been here all along.

When he notes her eyebrows raised in the direction of his tumbler of scotch he contemplates detailing the fifth of vodka he had for breakfast. Doesn't, but only just.

"You look like crap," she offers in lieu of a greeting. Figures the truth is as good a place as any to start.

"Why, thanks! And you look as fashionably bitchy as ever." But the retort lacks its usual bite. Falls somewhat flat as he raises his glass in her direction. A mock salute.

"No, seriously, Damon. You look like crap." In fact, she's more than a little taken aback by exactly _how_ crap he does look. Like maybe he hasn't slept since all this started.

She wonders if it's true as he offers her a shrug. A deliberate non-answer if ever there was one.

"Did you find anything?" he counters pointedly, and he may indeed _look like crap_, though, honestly? Doubtful. But his appearance is remarkably beside the point at the moment.

"Maybe."

"What do you mean, _maybe_?"

"I mean, _maybe_."

He swills the liquid around the base of his shallow glass. She expects him to tip it back and down the lot in one go, is more than a little put off when he doesn't. Appears to lose himself instead in the amber pool.

"Can you feel it right now?"

Her question shocks him with its degree of personal insight but he refuses to let her see that. Shrugs again, slow and deliberate, until he notices a scowl deepen into the lines across her forehead, like maybe she's about to abruptly withdraw all offers of assistance. He lifts his gaze an inch or several instead, "Maybe, a bit. I don't really know..." Drops his eyes back to his glass once the words are loose on the table top between them.

A tentative admission the best he can offer her right now.

She chooses her next sentence carefully. "It might mean that he's close by."

He slams the tumbler into the hardwood then, and she can see the second the glass splits, spiders a crack up one side but doesn't quite shatter.

The metaphor is almost blinding.

She does a quick scan of The Grill, searching for any familiar faces beyond Matt who is more than occupied at the bar. Finds none. "I don't know for sure but the grimoire suggests that it could be some kind of barrier spell. Like a force-field has been put up around him and the closer you get the more... well... you know."

She gestures vaguely in his direction, lowers her head so she can wrap her lips around the straw in her soda. Uses the time it takes to have a drink as an excuse to examine his reaction to the news.

He's staring at her blankly, like he hasn't understood a word that she's said. She stops sipping then. "Damon?"

"Huh?" He looks up at her, still as though confused.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. So... you mean, that's it? I can't... I can't even..." He's stumbling over his words to a degree and the effect is disconcerting to say the least. "I can't go near him?"

A thousand different conversations are running through his head. Have been since the agony ramped up to mind-blowing just north of the Canadian border.

None of them ended with _this_.

"Damon-" Because that's not necessarily what she meant but she can see where his thought processes have taken him.

"You have to remove it."

"I can't."

"What do you mean, you can't? Of course you can, you're a Bennett. You can-" He's going to finish with _do anything_, cuts off the words when she starts to shake her head with a little more vigour.

"No. Damon, I can't do _this_. I'm sorry-"

"No." He moves to stand then, like putting some distance between himself and the news will take it all away. It's a child-like action that shifts Bonnie's insides a little to the left.

Which is only fair. It feels like his insides are suddenly missing altogether.

"Damon, sit down. Please, there's more... just, sit back down."

He stops then, taps his fingertips against the wooden table top, weighs up her words, catalogues his options, realises he has only one before collapsing back to seated opposite her.

"I didn't say you can't get near him. Let me finish. I mean, it won't be pleasant. But I'm guessing you've already figured that much out, hey?" She huffs out a laugh that he doesn't reciprocate.

He raises his eyebrows instead. Feels them shift towards his hairline of their own accord.

"Okay, so, I think you probably _can_ get near him, but it'll hurt. A lot. And the energy that it takes to withstand the pain, I think that's what the force-field is for, really. I mean, you'll be a sitting duck, Damon. You won't be able to protect yourself. You won't be able to protect Elena..."

"But I can get near him?"

And she thinks he's missed her point entirely. "Yeah, probably, but-"

"Okay, that's all I needed to know." It's not. It's not even close. But he figures he can work the rest out as he goes.

Trial and error. If his chest doesn't explode then it's all good. Anything that isn't _that_, well... there's no point in being all Negative Nancy just yet.

"But Elena-"

_Elena_.

"Elena will be fine. Stefan won't hurt her. Not a chance."

"And you?"

He shrugs again. And she believes him this time. The empty nonchalance in the gesture.

"What about Klaus?"

"What _about_ Klaus?"

"You'll be _dead_, Damon."

"Won't be the first time that's happened."

"Damon." A warning. For what, she's not entirely sure.

"There's only so many times you can have the promise of finality handed to you on a plate just to have it ripped away again at the last minute."

"What?"

"I'm almost one hundred and seventy five years old. That's enough, don't you think?"

Forever has never felt so mind-numbingly far away.

She makes a move, her hands towards where his are curled loosely around his cracked glass. Is reaching for him before she can register her intention as a conscious thought.

"Damon..." Breathless as her hands meet nothing but musky air and silence. And she doesn't think she'll ever get used to that. To the speed at which they can be there and then not in the very same jagged exhale.

"Hey, there you are!"

A different face slides into view. Bright and blonde and perpetually bubbly. "I've been looking for you _everywhere_."

Caroline eyes the cracked tumbler with a frown, uses the back of her wrist to push it aside.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I was just... You know what? Never mind. You want to get out of here?"

"But I just arrived." The patented pout, cherry gloss bright, that only seems to have developed even more sting since her transformation.

"You can stay if you want, Matt's here," Bonnie indicates with her chin in the direction of the bar, "I'm going to find Elena."

Damon watches Caroline take his place opposite the witch from just under the neon green exit sign. Catalogues her easy laughter with an increasing sense of wonder.

Puts it down to the fact that she's yet to contemplate eternity. Yet to live the same story out again and again expecting a different result and failing to achieve it every single time.

Yet to fully comprehend the futility of existence. Immortal or otherwise

* * *

><p><strong>twenty six<strong>

Neither of them question the presence of the other when they set off once more just two days later. Elena in the driver's seat this time. The season is starting to turn, the sun stretching elongated fingers a little more defiantly across the horizon. She's wearing a loose t-shirt with sleeves that hang to her elbows. Damon finds his gaze glued to the back of her hand. The one that's closest to him. She rests it lazily on the handbrake, bounces her thumb in time with the soft beat of the radio.

His recollection of the night he almost died - again - is hazy at best. He remembers the staggering confusion and the searing pain with an almost visceral clarity; it is the more subtle moments that he struggles with the most. He thinks he dreamed that she kissed him once. Pressed her lips to his, impossibly soft, and whispered words against his eyelids.

He thinks he dreamed that she kissed him once, because believing it to be the truth is more than he can bring himself to cling to.

He thinks he dreamed that she kissed him.

Once.

.

.

.

They talk about Caroline and Tyler and the ridiculous way in which they circle around each other when they think no one else is watching. Cheeks flushed and glances stolen from under heavy lashes. Elena giggles and feels only a little guilty as she divulges school-girl secrets from the times the three of them, Elena, Bonnie and Caroline, would get together for sleepovers and map out their naïve teenager versions of the future.

Dark-haired husbands and blue-eyed babies. Glittering careers involving endless red carpets to traverse in impossibly high heels. Crystal cut champagne glasses and handprints immortalised in setting cement.

"You must think we're so stupid."

And she's serious suddenly. Takes her eyes off the road to seek out his as her voice thickens.

"What? Why would I think that?"

"I mean, it must seem so trivial to you. The three of us and our immature, _stupid_-" She cuts herself off. Doesn't finish. Eyes suddenly bright and back on the road ahead.

"I don't think you're stupid, Elena."

"It was though. I mean, really. Look at us now."

He opens his mouth, prepares to offer up platitudes that she'll never believe. Settles for catching her still bouncing thumb with his own instead. Locks them together for a beat or several before loosening his grip again, letting his fist settle on the seat beside his thigh.

Holds his breath until her hand follows his. Laces fingers with a squeeze.

"I'm sorry." Said on a sigh.

She catches the sincerity in his apology. Blinks back defiantly against tears she's refusing to concede. Knows no amount of indulgent self-pity will change the landscape of the rabbit hole she's currently tumbling down.

Can only hope with bated breath that when she lands at the bottom she's not there all alone.

* * *

><p><strong>thirty nine<strong>

They're not quite so fortunate the second time around.

Damon is driving, windows rolled to half way down and the dull throb of the radio mixing with the prevailing headwind to fill the car with just enough white noise that conversation is unnecessary. They're heading west of Jacksonville in North Carolina, Elena humming tunelessly to the beat of a song he doesn't quite recognise. This time there is no warning, at least, not beyond the flash of blacked-out windows that fly past in the opposite direction, and the agony in his chest is like someone has lit him on fire in an instant. Is incinerating him from the inside out.

He registers Elena's scream, feels the steering wheel pull sharply to the right as horns blare and the ground beneath them morphs from undulating black top to bumpy, off-road terrain. He slams his foot on the brake without opening his eyes. Prays to a God he's not believed in since he was seven years old that it's the right decision as the wheels lock and the car careens out of control.

She's still screaming when they come to a stop. The crunch of metal on metal or light pole or tree that he's expecting doesn't eventuate but it still feels like his ribcage is about to collapse in on itself. He fumbles to wrench open the door handle as Elena's raging hysteria continues to drown out all other sound. He stumbles, feels his face collide with the road-side landscaping they'd just mown down.

He twists to his side, arches his back to an angle that has his spine cracking in ways that it really shouldn't.

_"DAMON..."  
><em>

Hears the sound of his own name morph with the blood-curdling screams she's still leaking. He can taste blood. His own. Can feel it under his fingernails and sliding, ropey thick across his teeth and tongue.

He gags then. Inhales air he doesn't need alongside traces of his own insides. Chokes on the combination as his world starts to white out more than a little at the edges. There are hands twisting in his clothing, pulling him to upright as the agony threatens to send him over the abyss and into the black.

Almost wishes that it would just hurry up and do so already.

"Elena-" Chokes again, pleading with her to stop but not able to get the words into any kind of order that she'd understand.

Her arms lodge themselves under his and haul upright. He's lucid enough to comprehend the potential problems that a vampire writhing about on the side of the road could bring their way and so he lets her. Braces himself against the driver's door as she fumbles to get the backseat clear of their hastily re-packed possessions. Counts in eights to distract himself from the blinding agony while she shoves backpacks up against each other and flings discarded take-out containers into the front seat.

Dumps him unceremoniously on top of what she doesn't have time to rearrange and slams the door behind him. Skids the car back out of wherever it was that they came to a stop and doesn't make another sound until they're back on the road once more.

As the seconds tick by the pain lessens. And he knows by now it must mean that they're headed in the wrong direction.

"Elena, stop."

She laughs. Wild, wired. It doesn't sound like her at all.

"Elena, we're going the wrong way. Stop." He's struggling to sit upright. Pushing against the backseat with arms that tremble and threaten to send him back to horizontal, chin first. "Please, just stop for a second."

She gets the message then. Loud and clear. Appears to check the rear-view mirror quickly before slamming the brakes on right where they are. Leaves a trail of rubber and black smoke behind them as she does so. Almost sends him through the windshield in the process.

"Jesus, Elena."

Her head is pillowed on her arms, her whole body shaking in time with his pulsing heartbeat. He double-checks that the road is still clear, wonders how much negotiation will be required to get her to pull off to the side a little. Almost thinks it's not worth the inevitable fight.

The agony has receded to a dull throb that he thinks he can probably manage for now. Notes with some degree of horror that his fingers are coated in blood and his shirt is shredded. Realises then just how close he came to tearing out his own heart.

"Are you okay?" Needs to know that she is more than he thinks he's ever needed to know anything. Gets little more than a bark of harsh laughter in reply.

"Elena, seriously. Are you okay?"

"What, you mean, did you manage to stop the car just i_inches/i _before we ploughed head first into a freaking tree? If that's what you mean, then yes. Yes, I'm okay. But if you mean am I really okay, am I _okay_-okay, then no. No, I am not okay. I am so far from okay I don't think I could even recognise okay if I fell over it right now-"

He opens his mouth, prepares to wing an apology that isn't filled with too many lies and half-truths, is cut off before he can get even one word out.

"I'm tired, I think we're lost, we've been searching for Stefan for... I can't even remember how many days, you've told me more lies than I can possibly keep up with and-"

"Elena."

She raises a hand, palm out in his direction.

"And to top it all off, I really want Thai for supper. Where the hell do you think we're going to get Thai around here?"

She gesticulates wildly out the front window and he frowns then, somewhat confused by the incoherence of her outburst.

"Excuse me?"

"Thai, Damon. I really want-" Her face crumples then. Brown eyes bright with unshed tears that reflect his own dishevelled image right back at him. He climbs through the gap between the front seats, lifts her effortlessly onto his lap and shifts the car back into gear, nudges them off towards the gravel shoulder before easing the car gently to a stop once more and cutting the ignition. Leaves the muted radio to provide the haunting soundtrack to her cries as she buries her face in his ruined shirt.

"I am so scared, Damon. All the time, I'm scared. I can't even remember what it feels like to _not_ be scared. And I used to think that as long as you were here, then I'd be fine. I'd be safe-"

"Elena-"

"But I don't know if it's true anymore."

"Elena, you know I'd-"

"There was a massive freaking tree, Damon! Seriously, I am not exaggerating when I say it was _inches_ away from killing us both," she stops then; reconsiders, "Well, me anyway..."

"Elena," And he thinks he's said her name so many times in the last few minutes that he's not even sure she's hearing him anymore. "I'm so sor-"

"Are you dying?"

"What? No. Of course I'm not dying."

"Because I know that there's something going on with you and-"

"Elena, I'm not dying. I swear. At least, Bonnie doesn't seem to think I-" And he regrets the attempt to placate her as soon as the syllables pass his lips.

"Bonnie? What do you mean, _Bonnie doesn't seem to think you-_?"

He shuts his eyes, counts to nine before opening them again.

"I called her, just to, you know, ask her professional opinion-"

He sees the exact moment she inhales, fills her lungs with enough air to properly berate him. He concedes defeat then. Lets her have her anger, hot and heavy as it is. Figures she doesn't really have much else left after all...

"You mean you've told Bonnie, but you haven't bothered to fill me in yet? Who else knows? Alaric?" She pauses, waits for him to confirm or deny. He does neither but she assumes the truth nonetheless. "Of course Alaric knows. You two tell each other everything. And if Bonnie knows then Jeremy knows, and Caroline probably knows, which means Tyler and Matt-"

He shuts her up in the only way he knows how. Covers her lips, salt-water slick, with his own and folds his fingers into the knotted tangles of hair that fall across her collar bones. Vows not to stop until the racing pulse of her heartbeat stills at least somewhat against his own heaving chest.

.

.

.

They barely make it to the motel. A thrumming kind of tension that eats away at his resolve slowly but surely. The pressure in his chest builds again, but he's prepared for it this time. Relishes the notion that the end may be nigh and thinks he loses his mind a little bit in the process.

Dissolves down into some manic caricature of himself as Elena's panties catch on the crook of the knee she has driven up between his thighs.

He thinks he should slow her down. Already convinced that she's going to regret every sordid second when the sun makes its inevitable ascent into daytime. Goes so far to as to moan a warning into her left ear, whisper-soft but insistent nonetheless.

"Elena, think about this..."

She responds by unbuttoning his faded denim jeans and pushing them floor-ward with the hand that isn't fisted into his hair.

"Are you sure-"

"Stop talking."

Takes that as as close to a _yes_ as he's going to get and finally lets himself loose. Discovers the agony in his chest starts to beat in time with the grinding of her hips against his. Black and white and back to midnight black.

Figures if he's going to betray his brother in every way possible then he might as well do it properly.

.

.

.

It's hard and more than a little bit dirty. She screeches obscenities into the air behind his head and doesn't even care that the front door to their shitty apartment for the night has bounced back open again from where she'd attempted to kick it to closed.

She's still riding high on the raging adrenalin that has been pumping through her system since Damon came feet and inches close to wrapping them both around a tree. The degree of horror that lanced through her in that moment hasn't really faded in the aftermath and she feels like she's only one loud bang away from complete hysteria.

He's all sharp angles and mystery. Keeps his eyes shut to tight as she tilts her head back, encourages him to hoist her higher on his hips. Remembers the sheer agony that had twisted his facial features into a mask only moments earlier and dares him to tell her the truth.

Vows to drag it out of him in whichever way she can.

Figures lips and tongues and fingers that work their way up the knotted length of his spine are as good a place as any to start.

* * *

><p><strong>forty<strong>

He wakes to sunlight criss-crossing his chest. Relishes the pulsating push of pressure that reminds him Stefan is within reach. Notes the trail of bruises that paint his ribcage a bright patchwork purple and figures even sleep wasn't enough to quell the agony.

Resigns himself to filling Elena in on most of the story. Dreads the degree of her hurt and disappointment that he can already taste on the tip of his tongue. Isn't left wanting when the front door swings to open just split seconds later.

"Damon, we need to talk."

And he hadn't even realised he was alone until then, wonders vaguely how long she's been gone as a blood bag lands on the pooled sheet beside his left knee.

"Drink. I've talked to Bonnie-" He rolls his eyes at that because, _of course she has_. "Apparently we're close to where we need to be. But then, you already knew that, didn't you?"

The tilt of her head, the sharp angle of her chin, the loose curls of hair that she's no longer bothering to tame. She reminds him in that moment, achingly, of Katherine. Fierce and self-assured. Too much for him.

Always too much for him.

The both of them, he thinks.

.

.

.

She thinks her skin might be on fire. Each individual cell that came into contact with him, sweat-slippery and shocking. She uses action, and the fierce sense of betrayal she's currently swimming against, as almost but not quite successful distractions. Keeps one foot pointed in the opposite direction at all times in case the hammering urge to _run_ becomes more than she can bear.

She slides her gaze over where he's still tangled in familiar sheets. Steels her resolve with a vice-like grip of her fingers around the door frame. The conversation with Bonnie had been perfunctory at best. The other girl had offered no apologies, Elena had expected little else.

After all, secrets and lies are what they do best these days.

All of them.

"Why didn't you tell me?" She knows why. Just wants to hear him say the words.

Even as she knows that he never will.

One more puzzle piece in the game they're playing. Something like grown-ups and make-believe, only with consequences that are more than real.

His eyelids slide closed as he drags in air he doesn't need. And she wonders if up and leaving would be easier if he wasn't so _life-like_. Bruises across his ribcage to match the bruises under his eyes. That he can hurt, that he can _be_ hurt, she's not sure she'll ever be able to reconcile that.

"Elena."

And she knows then that her name, no more than a muted sigh, is all the explanation she's going to get. A revelation she is doggedly refusing to accept.

"No." Catches her breath as it pushes dust motes into a dance in the bright sunlight crossing her face. "No, you don't get to do that. Not anymore."

He's pushing himself to standing. Movements ginger. Stilted. She wants to scream in his face that she hates him with the power of a thousand suns. Knows he would believe her with everything that he has.

Knows she would never believe herself.

"Let me-" She cuts him off.

"You don't get to decide which parts of this plan I'm allowed to know and which parts I'm not. You don't-" He's moving towards her. One unsteady foot in front of the other.

"You don't get to treat me like a child anymore. You _can't_ treat me like a child anymore. Not after..."

He stops then. Pauses to stone-still just outside of her reach. "Is that what that was all about?" Expression emptied out in the space of one split second.

And she figures she could lie.

Say yes.

Tell him she only slept with him to gain some kind of tactical advantage. That it meant nothing more to her than striking up a win of sorts against her name. That she hadn't lost herself completely for the slow-turning seconds he was inside her. That she hadn't raked her nails down the centre of his spine in a desperate bid to leave some impossible trace of herself behind. A tangible reminder of all the bits of her that he'd already claimed.

She figures she could lie to them both.

Doesn't.

But only just.

.

.

.

Back in Mystic Falls, where the air is clearer and the undercurrent of panic a little less simmering, Katherine inclines her head with false disinterest as Caroline outlines the latest police broadcast her mother has happily divulged and then forgotten.

Hates with every fibre of her being to admit that the baby vamp has come through with the goods.

Again.

Begins to compare and contrast her initial solo mission plans with the potential benefits of having a side-kick.

After all, she's always worked best when she's had slightly needy minions to carry out the ground work.

Nods her head as Caroline finishes up her monologue with a self-satisfied smile and a quick bounce of her blonde curls.

Thinks; _you'll do._

_For now._

.

.

TBC_  
><em>


	3. PART THREE

**WATCH YOU BLEED ME DRY**

(PART THREE)

* * *

><p><strong>fifty one<strong>

They track what they're convinced is Klaus and his touring party, Klaus and _Stefan_, to a small town just seventy miles south west of Mystic Falls. And Damon can't help but roll his eyes at the outcome. They've searched for his brother left and right over the best part of two countries and in the end it's like they never even left home.

He wastes seven solid minutes attempting to convince Elena that her presence is not required for the next part of whatever the hell it is that they're doing. Had bargained on her refusing by minute three and so counts the fact that he gets to seven as something of a win.

Even if he still loses in the end.

He slows the car to a stop when they're still a few miles out. Hides his trepidation of what comes next carefully in the elongated shadows that fall across the vehicle's interior. The pulsating ache in his chest has become something of a comforting drum beat over the past few weeks. A constant reminder that his brother is still alive for the rescue.

That he himself is still alive enough to carry it out.

Even if only just at times.

"Elena-"

Her sharp intake of breath stills him to silence once more. The remainder of his final plea dissolving in the back of his throat.

"I'm coming with you."

She answers him nonetheless. Knows exactly what it was that he'd been planning to say, has her rebuttal all lined up and ready to go. He knocks the back of his head lightly against the headrest, takes a second or several to gather his thoughts and wonders, if only for a fleeting instance, whether calling for backup might be a better idea.

Knows, heavy-hearted, that Alaric, the witch and the wardrobe will only attempt to delay them even more than they already have been.

And so it falls to him.

As it should.

.

.

.

He turns off the deserted highway on instinct. Has his own personal compass wedged tightly in the space his heart and lungs used to live. The road towards the outbuildings that are their final destination is gravel and so he eases the car to a stop just inside the decrepit metal gate. Figures they need all the advantage they can get for this one and knows that announcing their arrival with the thunderous roar of car tyre on gravel is a sure-fire way to get them both killed before they even lay eyes on his brother.

Elena hasn't moved in her seat. Belt still firmly buckled. And he thinks, just for a fragmented second, that she might be going to stay there. Scared stiff and frozen.

Almost hopes for it to be the truth, even as he knows he can't do this alone.

"Damon?" Whisper quiet.

"Elena?" Quieter still. There is resignation in his voice that he can't quite bring himself to hide.

"Can we really do this?" Naïve hope laces her words; he lies so as not to spoil the illusion.

"Of course we can. It's Stefan. He'll probably be waiting for us... won't even have to get our hands dirty."

He tries for upbeat and is more than just a little disappointed in himself when it falls flat. Clouds the space between them with all the terror they're both too scared to acknowledge.

Elena smiles at him, soft and sure. She's grateful for his attempt at self-assured confidence. It is a dance he does well, she knows this.

Is relying on it.

She nods her head once. A quick up and down of her chin.

Hopes it reads a silent _I trust you..._

Thinks she might finally believe it with everything that she has.

.

.

.

Stepping out of the car feels like absolution. Decision staunchly made to do this, and to do it right. Damon opens the back of the SUV, hauls weapons he desperately hopes they won't need out onto the scuffed grass and gravel at his feet. Lines Elena up, his own eyes deliberately just south of her terrified gaze, slides a wooden stake into the back pocket of her denim jeans and holds out two vervain darts. Offers her a long-distance launcher for the vials and shrugs dismissively when she shakes her head violently, _no_.

And it all feels a little bit ridiculous. They both know that if Klaus decides he wants them dead, no amount of liquid vervain, no carefully whittled wooden spike, will be anywhere near enough to save them.

But he figures the least they can do is succumb trying. Arms himself to the hilt with more vervain darts and hopes for easily defeated minions he can take out along the way. Is almost itching for a fight, even as he knows he is no-where near strong enough to win one.

Stops, considers, wonders if maybe he's not been planning on a triumphant victory.

Going out in a blaze of glory was always more his style after all.

.

.

.

Damon shifts his shoulders in her direction, she catches him grimace almost imperceptibly. And she's terrified all of a sudden. Knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that there can be no turning back from this.

There's an expression on his face that she can't quite read.

She'd say it's resignation but she knows he doesn't do failure.

His cell phone bleats to ear piercing life in his pocket. She jumps and squeals and clamps her own hand over her mouth. Misses stabbing herself in the face with a vervain dart by inches and millimetres. He squints at the display before ending the call. Switches the phone off and tosses the useless device onto the front seat.

Even if they could come, they'd be too late...

.

.

.

"They're not picking up..."

"Can you please change the station?"

"How far do we have to go?"

"They're probably there already..."

"No, seriously. Will one of you please change the station..."

Questions and demands that remain unanswered. Nothing more than words to fill the emptied out spaces that surround their one unspoken thought.

_What if we're too late?_

_._

_._

_.  
><em>

"What are you doing here?"

The dark voice seems foreign for an instant, the deep timbre of a stranger, before a familiar face materialises in front of her. Elena feels her insides shift, south by south west.

"Stefan." Breathless, caught in the elated relief that fills her lungs, all hot air and humidity, "Thank God, come-"

"Elena." Her name as a warning. Damon, ahead of her, over Stefan's shoulder.

"I said, what are you doing here?" Barely more than a growl that shoots a shiver of ice along the length of her spine. Her feet shift against the dust, caught between forwards and backwards and a giant leap sideways.

"Stefan. No..." Damon to his brother this time, fierce and foreboding. As though he knows something Elena hasn't quite figured out just yet.

"We've been searching for you," she explains, eager for him to understand. "You have to come back-"

He laughs then and her stomach turns once.

Twice.

"Come back? Why on Earth would I want to do that?"

"Stefan, don't. You don't mean-" She blinks, wide and wobbly as Damon moves in her periphery.

"Oh, I think he does, Elena. We should probably-" He throws the vervain dart without warning. Uses the momentary surprise it brings to follow up the trajectory and depress the plunger to all the way in. Feels the night sky fill with the sound of screaming as Stefan protests the toxin vehemently but doesn't actually falter.

And not for the first time Damon thinks he may just have underestimated his little brother's strength.

"Elena, _go_." He'd offer more of an explanation but knows without needing to contemplate the situation that they're out of time.

And not to mention, shit out of luck.

"What? No, I'm not- Stefan?" She steps towards him. Hands up in a symbolic surrender she's still not entirely convinced she needs. "You don't want to do this-"

Stefan laughs again, a shard of sound that borders on psychotic. Damon has been privy to the haunting echo on previous occasions, but not for almost a century now.

A final confirmation that tonight will not end well.

_"Elena, go!"_

.

.

.

She registers Damon's barked instruction as background noise. A bright white static that fights for position around the still reeling realisation that this is Stefan.

But it is most definitely not _her_ Stefan.

And they are too late.

She feels the wind shift up a notch. The gusty breeze morphing into something a little more fierce. A little more determined to knock her off her feet.

It takes her longer than it should to understand that the movements of air buffeting her from every angle are being created by the fiercely duelling bodies of the boys, _her_ boys, locked together in a fight that she can't possibly hope to keep up with. Sinks to her knees amid decaying leaf matter, amid the bugs and the dirt and the black.

Shoves her fingers into her mouth in an attempt to block out the screaming.

.

.

.

Damon feels his brother slump somewhat in his arms. Rag-doll loose against his own shattered ribcage as their backwards momentum is broken by his own spine against the base of a thick tree that reverberates vivid protest at the contact. He buries his forehead between shoulder-blades that twitch and stammer. Can hear his own voice chanting into the heat that radiates from sweat-slippery skin.

_Little brother, little brother, little brother..._

And, _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..._

Lets his guard down for just long enough. Releases muscle tension that holds them trapped together, slides his eyelids to closed against the heady knowledge that he is all to blame for this.

Lets his guard down for just too long.

He's there and then he's not. Arms full and then empty as Stefan rears away at a speed that belies the vast quantities of vervain that have been pumped into him. Damon feels the rush of air that whistles through his teeth as he calls after him. Shifts to moving and ignites an agony that is unparalleled.

Core deep and hollowed out.

.

.

.

They're face to face for milliseconds.

They're face to face for eternity.

A hand pushes out, palm first. Comes to rest against the shredded rags of Damon's shirt. Stills against the stammer of his freight train heartbeat, as though Stefan might know more about what's going on in there than he'd care to admit. A thousand sentences begin and then die on his tongue. A shocking kind of muteness that fills his skull with cotton wool threatens to send him to his knees.

"Brother..."

The word curls out around lips that are snaked into melancholy and regret. Damon uses the momentary reprieve to memorise the sound.

_Brother._

_Brother, brother, brother._

"You know, Klaus said he doubted it would come to this."

_This?_ Damon blinks. Can't quite fathom what the _this_ is that he's referring to.

"Me?" Head cants to the right once more, mocking even as he continues. "I was a little more confident. After all, Katherine held your attention for a century and a half. I hoped I'd be worth at least that to you."

"Stefan-" Screws up his face against a wave of agony as he shuffles his feet forward by degrees.

"You feel it? Neat trick, huh?"

Damon snaps his eyes open at that. Watches as all the ducks fall into a row. One by one by one...

"You did this?"

"You sound surprised, big brother." He's laughing. Like maybe he's already been declared the victor in this particular war. "You forget that I know you better than you know yourself."

Damon fists his right hand into the scraps of shirt material that still cling desperately to his chest.

"The bigger the obstacle, the more likely you are to fight. And fight. And fight..."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"No." Shakes his head wildly, forgets to stop again. "No, I don't believe you..."

Stefan shrugs again, all brazen nonchalance and unnatural calm.

"Klaus said-" A monotone. Like he's been programmed to repeat a specific string of sentences.

And maybe he has.

Elena is watching the exchange through fingers splayed desperately across eyes that refuse to blink. Can't quite hear their words as they dissolve into the static that surrounds them. Damon's face is twisted into a mask of agony that she almost doesn't recognise and she longs to go back, so far back.

Yesterday, last week, last year.

Nothing is going to plan.

She's standing now, despite the fact that she can't seem to remember pushing to her feet. Catches Damon's glazed stare over the poised rise and fall of Stefan's left shoulder.

The faded denim jacket Stefan is wearing, an item of clothing that she doesn't recognise, is torn in some places, ripped to rags in others. Smudged with a black red that she knows must be blood but can't quite figure out _whose_...

Could even be hers for all she knows.

The vervain dart Damon plunged into his shoulder right back at the start of this unholy unravelling is still in place. A macabre image to match the identical dart in his left thigh and the whittled wooden stake he hasn't yet bothered to remove from his right.

Damon opens his mouth to tell her to run. Fights for the words around the marching band that has set up camp in his chest and the sledgehammer that has seriously shifted his centre of gravity backwards and to the side.

He can't for the life of him figure out why she's still there. Gaping at him soundlessly and with her fingers shifting from over her eyes to fisted between her teeth. Like maybe she's trying to chew her own arm off.

Or something...

He blinks dumbly, thinks he'll need to have words with her once this is all over. Remind her that when he screams, and it's not something he does all that often, then she really, _really_ needs to listen. But the shifting of his gaze gives the game away too soon.

Too late. Too everything in between.

Stefan's shoulders lift once, a shrug of sorts, before he grins. Bright eyed and bloodied.

"Lemme guess... _Elena?_"

But it's not really a question.

And they both know what happens now.

"Klaus said she'd be here..."

.

.

.

His teeth are tickling at her neck before she can register that he's even moved. And by the time that realisation happens upon her, slap-in-the-face shocking, it's too late to do anything more than fist her fingers into his hair and pray.

.

.

.

Damon's still got a stake stashed in the back pocket of his jeans. Twisting to wrench it free is an equilibrium-shifting experience as the whole world tilts down below the horizon.

He's pretty sure he's dying. And he's pretty sure Elena is already dead.

And he'd laugh if it wasn't all so ridiculously _pathetic_.

His right arm is above his head now and how it got there he can't quite fathom. Brings his elbow down with all the force he can muster. Buries the shaft of the stake between shoulder-blades that barely flinch.

It is only the immediate and complete dissolution of the marching band in his chest that tells him his aim was true...

The realisation is shocking. Steals what little breath he's managed to hold on to.

And every last scrap of his resolve.

.

.

.

"Ow. Would you please just sit still. If you accidentally stake me with that thing before we get there, I swear-"

"If you don't shut up, I'll stake you myself. Seriously, what are you all? _Five?_" Katherine is edgy. Edgier than usual. Can quite put her finger on a reason for why.

At least, not one beyond _Stefan _and maybe_ Damon_, and she's never been that level of pathetic. Is hardly going to start now.

They've made up ground surprisingly efficiently, though she doesn't think she'll bother to pass on that piece of information to their chauffeur for the evening. Alaric more than relishing his role as resident Nascar racer in an attempt to get them across the seventy miles in time.

As she finally swings the car door open, steps out into the still night air, she knows immediately that they are too late. Sees Caroline stop and start off to the left. Knows instinctively the she feels it too. Thinks there might be hope for her as a decent vampire yet.

Their eyes meet. Caroline's mouth drops to open, eyes a sudden, brilliant bright blue. Katherine shakes her head soundlessly. A warning.

Not yet.

The rest of the rag-tag rescue crew are waiting for her command. She contemplates telling them to stay put, to wait in the car with the windows rolled to up and the doors locked, but she has come to know them well enough over the last few weeks, few _months_, to understand what a fruitless request it would be. Motions instead for them to stay behind her and Caroline as they make their way through the trees.

They've almost rounded the barn-like structure obscuring her view when she hears the screaming. So much like her own muted echo in the back of her head that it stalls her for a moment and she switches up to a blur only split seconds before she registers Caroline do the same.

Arrives just in time to watch Damon, hands and knees and eyes clenched to closed, plunge a stake between his little brother's shoulder-blades.

Barely recognises the next howl as it rips a path past her own raw vocal chords.

It's not until she has roughly pulled Damon free from his brother that she finds Elena.

And her answer.

The significance of Damon's choice, a resounding slap against her face that rattles all the way through her hollowed-out insides.

She thinks minutes disappear then, and suddenly Caroline has Elena pulled into her lap, is force-feeding her blood from her own torn wrist as Alaric settles down beside an unresponsive Damon. Her own fingers are ghosting over a face that she barely recognises. Fangs still descended. Skin shrivelled.

Dead.

Properly this time.

"Well, well, well. What an intriguing turn of events."

_Klaus_.

.

.

.

Katherine panics. Pulls Stefan's decaying corpse up and against her chest with an instinct she barely recognises. Her last attempt at something resembling protection.

Klaus nudges his toe against Damon's shoulder. Alaric's fingers are fisted into the front of Damon's shredded shirt but he doesn't so much as flinch at Klaus' proximity.

She can't decide in that moment if the human is brave or simply stupid. Figures probably a healthy combination of both to be the truth.

She slides her gaze back to Klaus. Watches him surreptitiously through lashes that she doesn't quite drag to all the way open. Notices him flinch, perhaps in annoyance, before his own lips twist into a self-satisfied grin.

"Ah, Miss Bennett. You don't seriously think-"

"Touch them and you'll be-"

"I'll be what? Dead? I don't think so. Besides... what could I possibly want with either of those two?"

Katherine notices that Elena is starting to rouse. Motions instinctively to Caroline to keep her quiet. To keep her still. Watches as Caroline gets the message, loud and crystal clear. Flips her shredded wrist over and presses her palm against Elena's blood-smudged lips instead. Brings her other hand up to her own and indicates for her to stay silent.

Elena bucks violently once. A seething sort of panic building under her skin as Caroline's mouth works its way around whispered platitudes and reassurances that she'll never bring herself to believe. The metallic tang of blood that isn't hers fills the back of her throat. So much and not enough like Damon's that her stomach lurches from the fleeting memory of his wrist against her saliva-slick lips.

Her vision is filled with a tumultuous mess of blonde hair and blood. The only sound she can register, the ragged sawing of her own breath, hot and humid as it fights for escape between the fingers pressed tightly, too tightly, against her nose and mouth.

She can't _breathe_...

.

.

.

Klaus kicks at Damon's shoulder once more and this time Alaric reacts. Repositions his own body so that he's between the Original and his best-friend.

Klaus laughs. Joyful and incredulous. "Relax. I have no interest in hurting him. In fact, this whole performance has been remarkably entertaining, if perhaps a tad too _melodramatic_ for my tastes..."

He is the only one to offer up a grin.

"You know, I wasn't convinced he had it in him." Jerks his chin down in Damon's direction before he continues, "Choosing the girl over his own brother. I'll have to get him to give Elijah some lessons on the futility of family loyalty."

He laughs again, takes a step back, shrugs. "Oops. Too late for that."

.

.

.

"You know, it really was all too easy."

Klaus is still speaking. Like maybe he thinks they're waiting for an explanation.

A detailed reason that makes some modicum of sense.

"I think I liked the poetry of it the most." A nod. As though confirming the notion for himself. "Yes, the whole thing does positively _ring_ of Shakespearean tragedy after all..."

The wind has died down, faded to a murmur that gently shifts the trees that surround them. Like maybe even the woods know they can't compete with this turn of events.

"I mean, he relinquished everything for his brother. Did so without second thought. Which is funny when you think about it. When you look at where we are now..."

He grins. Gestures with a theatrical flourish. Continues his soliloquy.

"... And what an interesting little game it all turned out to be. Though I must admit, not the end result I'd been expecting..."

.

.

.

Klaus leaves then. Claps his hands thrice, like he might be applauding the show, before disappearing back in the direction he came from. There's a split second interval where their world falls to white noise and empty air before Elena shatters the night sky. Drags in a lungful of life and shoves Caroline aside easily. Shrieks a string of consonants and vowels that might be _Stefan_ and might be _Damon_ and might be none of the above.

Might well be both.

She's a tableau between them. Left and right. Up and down.

Dead and gone.

Finds her own frozen face mirrored in Katherine's.

Screams. Feels her knees hit dirt and debris. Fingers fisted into the molten earth beneath her.

Stops breathing and can't imagine ever starting again.

.

.

.

They make their way back to Mystic Falls, funeral procession-like. Katherine stows Stefan in the trunk of Elena's car. Pushes Damon's boneless body across the backseat and drives with her gaze fixed firmly on the rear-view mirror.

A futile exercise.

Caroline and Bonnie collect Elena, trap flailing limbs between their own and allow themselves to be led back to Alaric's car.

The only proof they'd ever been there: blood spilled.

* * *

><p><strong>fifty two<strong>

Katherine is coiled in the armchair she's moved into his bedroom when he regains consciousness, had easily shifted the piece of furniture into position when it became clear that the night was going to be a long one. His bookshelf has proved a constant source of distraction from the steady rise and fall of his bruised chest.

She watches.

She pretends that she doesn't.

His eyes do a silent sweep of the room, settle on her eventually. And she wonders when his default became Elena and not her as the moment he figures it all out flashes, neon bright, across his face.

"She's not here."

Katherine stays.

Elena leaves.

A paradox of sorts.

He shifts, as though to move. She's on him before he has the chance, her fingers wrapped around his wrist.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

He blinks lazily. The fresh blood in the IV line she's eventually managed to hook up has yet to make much of an impact on the significant damage he's incurred during the hours that made up last night.

"Do what?"

The sound is like glass under her nails.

"Move."

"Why? What did you do to me?"

Another default assumption. She'd have been pleased...

Once upon a time.

"Me? Nothing. Everybody else? Well, that's a different story..."

He ignores her then. Attempts a move to seated.

"Would now be the time to say _I told you so_?" she quips, risks a sideways glance at the IV and wonders if he's alert enough to attempt drinking directly from the bag yet.

"Your pelvis was wrapped around a tree, Damon. You've basically been unconscious since it happened. If you had plans for a busy Friday night, I'd consider cancelling them if I were you..."

"Elena?"

"Like I said, not here. Her brother and the witch took her home a while ago. She's mostly fine, that is, if you discount the shock value of watching the brother you're hooking up with on the side kill the brother that's supposed to be your boyfriend of course-"

"Get out."

And suddenly Elena is poised in the doorway, one hand against the frame, the other on her hip, defiant, and Katherine berates herself for not being more aware of her changing surroundings.

"Excuse me?"

"I said, _get out._"

She laughs derisively but edges back a step or several in retreat nonetheless. Raises her hands, palms out, some kind of symbolic surrender. And she knows she's giving up so much more than just her current nursemaid role.

The air shifts as Elena makes her way further into the room, tentative by degrees. And she finds it interesting that they've yet to even acknowledge one another. Wonders if what it is that they've been through together suddenly means words and syllables are almost unnecessary.

A redundant kind of imposition when shaded half glances have the power to say so much more.

She spins then. Admits resounding defeat and figures there's no point hanging around to have her face rubbed in it. Sets her shoulders and swings her hips. Doubts either of them notice.

"Katherine?"

Her name as a question full of uncertainty.

She stops in response but doesn't bother to turn around. Waits.

"Thank you."

And it's not what she's expecting. Almost has her flinching under the weight of gratitude and sincerity.

"Thank you for organising... for looking after-" Elena stumbles over the words. Can't quite seem to get them out from where they appear stuck at the back of her throat. Tongue-tied with tears that Katherine is sure she'll never shed in her presence.

She'd spent thirty seven fruitless minutes attempting to force-feed a slowly desiccating Damon in the aftermath. Eventually deduced that Stefan's tree trunk stunt resulted in a ruptured femoral artery or two and that he was nowhere near strong enough to heal himself before he completely bled out.

She'd never set up an IV before but it seemed like the logical step. Figured if she couldn't get him to drink the blood she'd collected then she might as well pump it directly into him. It was a slow process and she fumbled with the needle more than once. A thrumming kind of panic that was wholly unfamiliar to her filling every square inch of her insides.

He'd been completely unresponsive. Unconscious. And Stefan is dead and Damon was _this close_ to joining him and for as long as she can remember it's always been about the three of them. And it's not even close to being about that anymore but in the moment that it's all about to be torn to shreds forever she thinks it's quite possibly the only thing she's ever really wanted.

Katherine and her boys.

Gone. Figures dwelling on the disconcerting disappointment is ridiculously beneath her.

She raises her hand over her shoulder, still has her back turned to both of them. Tosses a casual _whatever_ into the space behind her and makes for the stairs.

Vows to descend them and to never look back.

.

.

.

"Elena."

"Shhh." Presses a finger softly against his lips. Blinks. She's crying but it seems almost unimportant. Like maybe she's not even aware that she is.

Like suddenly sadness and despair have become her default setting and the presence of tears is inconsequential.

He lets his eyelids slide to closed. Allows himself to block out her image for split seconds and remember her from before. Hands on her hips and defiance in her eyes. A confident smirk and the uncanny ability to see straight through him.

No matter how hard he tried to hide.

.

.

.

But he's got no energy left for hiding now and she's no longer looking that closely anyway.

.

.

.

He doesn't think he believed Katherine when she told him Elena was okay. Had finally gathered up the wits to doubt her, the one time she was telling him the truth.

He feels wrung out.

Infinitely older than his one hundred and seventy odd years.

She picks up the hand that has the tubing snaking into it. Examines the mechanism closely, swings her gaze up his arm to where the bag of blood hangs on a make-shift stand. Katherine has done well, she thinks.

"Are you going to be okay?"

He shrugs as he nods. Cancels one wordless answer out with the other.

"Yeah." She breathes her agreement, sad and unsure. Drops his hand back to the sheet as she steps away. "Me too."

There's a gulf between them. And she can cling to him all she wants but the space seems suddenly insurmountable.

Caroline's blood has been as much curse as cure. She feels refreshed. Strong.

Stronger than she's been in months.

She longs to fall to pieces. To fit slivered shards of herself into the gaps where it looks like Damon has vital bits missing.

But those gaps are many. And she fears there is not nearly enough left of her to go around.

* * *

><p><strong>fifty four<strong>

He dreams Stefan is eight years old. All floppy hair and bright, bright eyes that question endlessly. Radiating a tangible kind of innocence that tingles at his fingertips.

Wakes trembling and disoriented. Makes it to the bathroom to vomit.

But only just.

Can't quite sweep together the shattered pieces of himself that lay discarded on the tile by his knees. Wonders how long he'd have to sit there before he disappeared into them completely.

Figures he has eternity.

And that it should be more than enough.

"Damon?"

Knocks his forehead against the wall, refuses to acknowledge the voice.

Midnight shift on the impromptu suicide watch.

"Damon, you okay?"

And he thinks he might finally understand Elena's middle of the road hysteria from all those days ago. Might finally appreciate the complete mindlessness that preceded it. Feels his own snapping synapses emptying out with a roaring tidal rush of sand and seaweed.

"Oh, Ric, you do ask the most_ redundant_ questions..."

There's scotch on his lips.

And the acrid tang of regret on his tongue.

There're worms digging trenches through his decaying insides.

And black-red blood on his hands.

"Of course I'm okay." Grins as Alaric's expression slips to somewhere south of Mexico. "Aren't I always?"

.

.

TBC


	4. EPILOGUE

**.  
><strong>

**WATCH YOU BLEED ME DRY**

(EPILOGUE)

* * *

><p><strong>fifty six<strong>

A funeral of sorts is organised but most definitely not by him. Figures Alaric or Caroline or someone equally well adjusted and normal had made that _winning_ decision. He wonders how many bottles of scotch he'll need to drain before the whole debacle becomes bearable. Wears his leather jacket, a pair of jeans that sit on just the wrong side of needing a wash, and a scowl that is fast becoming his default setting.

If he bothers with shoes then he doesn't remember which ones.

Elena arrives in a shapeless black dress. She's painted her face with too much smudged eye makeup that is already threading a path to her chin, and a shocking slash of blood-red across her lips. He stares at her for a beat from a point mid-way down the main staircase. Blinks dumbly. Can't quite decipher whether she's in mourning or auditioning for an emo cult.

Her mouth moves but he fails to detect sound. Like they're both suddenly stuck in some silent movie where everyone cries or bleeds or dies and one option is no better, no worse than the next.

He thinks he's been here before.

.

.

.

Her friends filter through the doorway then. Caroline shifts her gaze to meet his, smiles a slow, sad smile that reeks of undeserved pity. The witch doesn't bother to acknowledge his presense and the familiarity of her non-reaction is lifeline-like.

.

.

.

"Nice to see you went to so much-"

It's the aftermath now, and the booze-induced buzz has faded to a high-pitched ringing in his ears. He's on her before she can finish the sentence. Forearm pressed heavily against her throat.

"Now, now," she still manages to condescend. "Is that any way to treat the person who swooped in and saved your pathetic excuse for a life?"

She laughs. A melodious tinkle that belies her true intent.

He doesn't bother to remind her that the last person to have had a go at saving him ended up with a stake between his shoulder-blades. Knows it would be air; wasted.

He moves away instead, lets her drop back to the floor, cat-like in her grace. "What do you want?"

"Such a moving ceremony."

He snorts. Should have known she'd be there.

Lurking.

But she came to say goodbye to Stefan. Had figured a century and a half of loving him, the idea of him, she's yet to really figure out which, had earned her that right at least.

He'd have hated the whole thing. Of that she is most definitely sure.

Thinks Damon probably knows it too. In the parts of him that are made up of the parts of his brother that he's collected along the way. Used as replacements for where his own insides have rusted.

If she thinks, just for a second, that the only good in him is the good he stole from Stefan, then she wouldn't be the only one.

But they'd both be wrong.

"Goodbye, Katherine."

Pointed. And she's almost as sick of this game as he is.

Plays along nonetheless.

"Goodbye, Damon."

Figures they'll be playing it for eternity.

* * *

><p><strong>sixty<strong>

Caroline delivers Elena her completed homework on a Tuesday morning. She knows it's a Tuesday because the garbage collection wakes her from where she's fallen asleep in front of the muted television.

Or maybe yesterday was Tuesday.

And today Wednesday.

Or Friday.

Or tomorrow.

And really, what difference does any of it make?

She smiles and nods her head and throws around thank yous and promises that she most definitely means but barely manages to feel. Engages in an enthusiastic conversation about the pros and cons of skinny jeans over boot cut at one point and only just stops herself from putting her fist through the kitchen window.

But then; "Have you talked to him since?"

And the change in conversation is so stunningly abrupt that she wonders if Caroline hasn't suddenly added mind reader to her list of supernatural capabilities.

"Huh?"

Feigns confusion to buy herself time for breathing.

_In and out, out and in. _

Or something like that.

"Damon, have you talked to-" Caroline's voice drops, fades out in the direction of her lowered gaze until she snaps back up to eye contact. "I'm not one hundred percent convinced he's, you know, _stable_."

She whispers the word conspiratorily, like pairing together the concepts of 'Damon' and 'instability' is something new. Something novel.

"I think he'd listen to you."

"Why? He's never listened to me in the past, what makes you think now would be any different?" Collects up the completed homework she didn't even know had been set and heads for the door without skipping a beat. "We're going to be late."

.

.

.

There's an empty seat beside her in class. She keeps turning towards it, a reflex motion, expecting to find him sprawled there, staring back at her. Quiz already completed or notes perfectly scribed.

Is always a little surprised when he's not.

Takes a moment.

Remembers…

* * *

><p><strong>sixty five<strong>

Damon thinks he's decided that death, his own, would be too easy now. A reprieve of sorts that he far from deserves.

Alaric buys him booze and Caroline brings him blood bags that go untouched for longer than they probably should. He drinks just enough to keep his feet underneath him and steady. But not enough that everything comes into sharp clarity. Hides out in the heady haze that exists between waking and desiccation and pretends like he doesn't, just for a split second, think that every tap at his door, every car tyre rolling over in his drive, belongs to Elena.

It works.

For the most part.

.

.

.

It's been four days since he last saw her, back to him and walking away.

.

.

.

It feels like everyone, everyone _left,_ is watching him, waiting for the moment that he snaps and devours the town in one fell swoop. He doesn't know how to articulate that he's barely got the energy required to get out of bed in the mornings, let alone spend the night terrorising the neighbourhood.

His eyes close around images of his brother's face. Alternate, strobe-like, between fangs that drip, drip, drip with Elena's blood and the toothy grin of a wide-eyed toddler.

He wants to hate Klaus. To hunt him down and torture him one hundred ways to Sunday.

But he doesn't and he can't.

After all, Klaus only succeeded where Damon himself had tried and failed on numerous occasions.

* * *

><p><strong>seventy three<strong>

Damon knows that Elena loved Stefan because of who he was. He thinks, he _hopes_, that she might love him, too.

But if she does, he also knows that it is only inspite of all the myriad ways in which he has let her down.

* * *

><p><strong>seventy four<strong>

Caroline tells her. In the same way that Caroline tells her everything newsworthy these days.

"He left."

She blinks dumbly, feels her forehead crease into a frown even as the base drops out of her stomach. Reflexively asks Caroline to repeat herself despite the fact that she's heard her loud and crystal clear the first time.

Knows exactly the _he_ to whom she is referring.

"Damon, he left. He-"

Her eyes are bright with unshed tears that Elena can't quite fathom.

"_I mean, I tried, Elena, I really tried. For you. For him-"_ She's babbling. Elena watches her lips move but doesn't so much as register a note. _"I did everything I could think of to fix him for you."_

.

.

.

She goes to class and sits in Stefan's seat, looks over toward her own empty desk instead.

Finds the juxtaposition oddly comforting.

.

.

.

He's slumped to seated on her front veranda when she gets home.

Eyes closed. Asleep or dead or dying.

It's hard to tell the difference these days.

She walks past him without word. Stomps heavily up the stairs and slams the door to shut behind her back.

He's waiting in her room when she arrives.

Just like she knew he would be.

"Caroline told me you left town." She's seething inside. An incongruous mix of fear and fury that she can't quite bring herself to reconcile.

He shrugs, speaks. Voice rough from lack of use. "I did."

"And yet, here you are…" She lets the sarcasm roll out and onto the floor between them. An almost tangible entity.

He shrugs again. She wants to scream in his face.

"I got as far as the state line. Sat in the car for three hours before turning around and coming back…" Trails off. She wonders if this is her cue to feel sorry for him. "You know," brings his eyes up to meet hers, sudden and sure. "There was a time when all I wanted was to get the hell out of this town."

"Then what's stopping you?"

She knows the answer. They both do.

"Nothing I guess," he lies. Bald-faced. Shuffles his feet uncertainly in a way that trips across her misfiring synapses. "Elena?"

But she's this close… _this close. _

"_What do you want from me?_" Screamed.

"I think I want you to hate me." Measured. Empty. A thousand other things that set her teeth on edge.

"Well, _too bad_, because I don't."

"I know you don't. You hate yourself."

"Oh, please." She laughs and the bitter tang burns on her tongue. "Like you haven't always had the monopoly on that particular world view."

She can hear herself speaking words, complete sentences even. But she's not entirely sure what it is they're talking about now. Guesses an implied change of topic has occurred somewhere along the line and what they're screaming about on the surface no longer correlates with the underlying messages.

"I wish I hadn't done it."

She stops still at his words. Feels her blood freeze to glaciers in her veins because; "Well, I wish _he_ hadn't done it."

And there it is.

The truth.

.

.

.

He nods his silent agreement and moves to push past her, out into the hall. She reefs on his arm, spins him back to face her. "I'm sorry…"

He blinks. Matches her sudden tears with his own. Hot and heavy. Understands immediately that she's not apologising for her thoughts, only for what they would mean.

"Me, too." They're on the same page after all.

Always have been.

She brings her fingers up to her face. Speaks into them even as she's staring directly at him. "_Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God_."

He feels sick. Like he might _actually_ be sick. Because he's there too. All the way to the very bottom of despair. And for the first time in a long time he knows that he's not there alone. And there's a flare of agony in his chest that is so desperately familiar but so achingly _different_ all at once.

"Elena." Urgent. Desperate for her to understand.

"What did we do? Oh, _God_. Damon, what did we do? _What did we do? What did we do. What did we do." _Until the words are no longer a question she's seeking the answer to.

.

.

.

They're slumped to seated against the frame of her bedroom door. She can't remember how it was they got to there, nor calculate how much time has elapsed.

Damon has her enveloped against his chest. And it should be suffocating but it's not. It's not even close.

She can't begin to imagine how she'll conjure the strength required to let him go again. To stand up. To _breathe_.

Doesn't want to even as she knows that she must. Recognises her own shattered angles as they grate against the jagged cavities created by his.

Can't help but wonder how many of them she is directly responsible for.

* * *

><p><strong>seventy seven<strong>

They cross the road headed in opposite directions, and the ridiculous metaphor is so blinding she almost laughs out loud.

An itching kind of hysteria that it seems she's well versed in these days.

Rehearses what she'll say to him when she finally gathers together the courage required to stop walking past.

_Hello_… _I'm sorry.._. _I miss you.._.

And;

_Isn't it hilarious how we managed to completely destroy the one thing that had been keeping us together?_

.

.

.

The air is cool and her breath billows as she exhales. A white cloud that he thinks he could drown in if given the chance.

He lets her walk past. Offers up a grin and a nod and prays they both look something like genuine might. Waits until she's out of his peripheral vision before turning.

Tries, fails to hide his shock when he finds her stopped and staring back at him. Fingers fisted into the scarf twisted at her throat. He knows he should keep walking even as his feet inch him closer to her. Off the side-walk and back into the street.

She grins. Slow and wide, and he shrugs in return. Feels lighter in that moment than he thinks he has in decades. Stays standing with his feet in the gutter so they're eye to unblinking eye. Tracks the movement of her hand as it drops to her side before bringing his gaze back up to meet hers.

Is watching her every twitch and tremble as he feels her fingers fist into his. Tighter than he thinks she should be capable of.

But then again, she always has been stronger than he gives her credit for.

.

.

THE END


End file.
